New York Times best-selling author Richard North Patterson will speak about his newly released, Vineyard-based book, Loss of Innocence, on Thursday, October 3 in a collaborative event offered by the West Tisbury Library Foundation, Inc. and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society. Poet and journalist Laura Roosevelt will add her perspective in an interview format. The event is being billed as “1968: America’s Loss of Innocence.

Books will be available for sale and signing afterwards.

Refreshments will be served in the Film Center lobby afterwards.

All ticket proceeds benefit the West Tisbury Library Foundation and the MV Film Society.

Advance praise for

LOSS OF INNOCENCE“Loss of Innocence, second of a projected trilogy, is the compelling account of a family’s collapse amid multiple betrayals in the bloody year 1968. The book moves at high velocity, is grandly plotted with a crescendo of an ending. This is Richard North Patterson at the top of his game.”—Ward Just, author of An Unfinished Season and Rodin’s Debutante

“Like male novelists of the Nineteenth century, Richard North Patterson actually looks at the world through a woman’s eyes. He tells us the story of a girl born into a derived identity, and her path toward who she is and what she wants. In one life of the 1960s, he symbolizes a movement that keeps changing all our lives.”—Gloria Steinem, author of Revolution from Within

“Loss of Innocence is a stunning tour de force by one of my favorite novelists. This coming-of-age story electrifies with the authenticity of the Sixties—the sex, politics, language, mores and music. And Martha’s Vineyard, with its heartbreaking beauty, is the ideal setting for an engrossing drama of a so-called perfect family riven by its secrets. Richard North Patterson, always brilliant, is better than ever.”—Linda Fairstein, author of The Deadhouse

“Wealthy, WASPY and protected, Whitney Dane lives a life of privilege under the seemingly benevolent patriarchy of her powerful father. At the family summer home on Martha’s Vineyard, political violence and anti-war protests seem far away. But in the course of the season, cracks open in her closest relationships, exposing rot and darkness within and linking Whitney to the larger issues of race, class and corruption that roil the country. Richard North Patterson has created a richly textured romance, deftly set amid the seismic social shifts of 1968.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Caleb’s Crossing